Dawntrail's MSQ story is a disaster and waste of potential. [full spoilers]

[Raven2014]

I think a shounen anime story would've been OK if it were low stakes like we were promised,

Shounen and saving the world is a common combination in JRPG, and many of them great. Most of the Tales of ... , Trails of ..., Xenoblade are shounen or partial shounen with a comming of age theme with the fate of the world hanged in balance.

You just need the writing to be ... not sucking.

[lolnotacat]

Shounen and saving the world is a common combination in JRPG, and many of them great. Most of the Tales of ... , Trails of ..., Xenoblade are shounen or partial shounen with a comming of age theme with the fate of the world hanged in balance.

You just need the writing to be ... not sucking.

It can mean saving the world, but there are plenty of "low stakes" shounen with adventure. All shounen means is young boy, which is the audience the themes cater to. Yes, it can be huge saving the world battles, but it can also be simple slice of life stories. I think helping someone become Queen would still be a pretty good adventure if it were written well, which is what I agree with you on; the writing was bad.

[fioravictorine]

On the subject of "new arcs" and being fresh and exciting and fun, let's take a look at a free to play game, and a gacha game at that. Honkai Star Rail (HSR) released and completed their Penacony arc this year. In the span of approximately 6ish months, they delivered a beautiful, immersive, emotional, and quite nearly fully voice acted experience that I honestly believe is one of the best stories in gaming in the past 5 years. And it's a free gacha game. I can't believe I'm comparing a paid subscription MMO to a gacha game and preferring the story in the gacha game. Hell, I can't believe I'm praising the story in a gacha game - it feels wrong. Point is, the story of Penacony is almost completely air-tight and doesn't really relate to the rest of the prior story at all except for some core lore threads that have been following us the entire time in addition to its main attachment to the primary plot. Everything from start to finish from the characters, setting, the "stakes" and everything else in-between was introduced and subsequently tied off in a very beautiful and satisfactory manner in the span of approximately 40 hours of gameplay. If a free gacha game can deliver that in less than a year, I have MUCH higher expectations for a paid MMO that boasts the story as one of their primary strengths, and requires the player to play through it before getting into the endgame content. Because I've spent close to $1000 playing FF14 over the years, and $0 playing HSR. Mea culpa.

Yess this

DT defenders always come with excuses such as 'oh its a new arc' and brush off complainers coz 'we aren't MC'

Yet Penacony is just that, and its such an amazing story filled with many likeable characters (well cos Mihoyo actually have to sell 10-20 new ones a year)

Meanwhile, SE spent two years just to make one character in Wuk Lamat that split the fanbase instead...lol

[Syln]

Hey on the bright side, when it come to story writing and telling, it can only get better ! ... surely they won't do worse hahaha .... haha ..... ha ... please tell me they won't manage to do worse :'(

[Catwho]

I won't disagree with OP because they clearly put a lot of thought and effort into their post, and it's definitely a sentiment I've seen echoed around the Internet and various forums and whatnot.

But what I will say is this: The opinion of the average reviewer is not the same as the opinion of the average player of the game, because a lot of people who are merely satisfied with the story - neutral to positive - don't care enough either way to write a review about it.

[Raven2014]

I won't disagree with OP because they clearly put a lot of thought and effort into their post, and it's definitely a sentiment I've seen echoed around the Internet and various forums and whatnot.

But what I will say is this: The opinion of the average reviewer is not the same as the opinion of the average player of the game, because a lot of people who are merely satisfied with the story - neutral to positive - don't care enough either way to write a review about it.

And what is your point really? Of course there will always be people of different opinion, that's why it's called opinion and not scientific fact. Even at the peak of End Walker, there were still people complained about the story. But here's the difference:

- In End Walker, the story was almost universally praised.

- In Dawn Trail, the story is being almost universally lambasted.

Yes, there were people who hate End Walker. Yes, I bet there are people who are enjoying Dawn Trail ... but are you saying none of that matter because ... opinion? Like ... what's your point? What do you want to say ... or should I ask ... what are you trying to avoid to say?


Whenever I hear/see people talking like this, it reminds me of a certain quote from MSG2, paraphrase 'cause I can't remember word for word:

In modern day, the difference of opinion means everyone is validated, but no one is right. And we're all swallowed in the sea of indifference

Hey on the bright side, when it come to story writing and telling, it can only get better ! ... surely they won't do worse hahaha .... haha ..... ha ... please tell me they won't manage to do worse :'(

Well, as little as it is 7.01 is better, A LOT better.

If past example with End Walker of anything to go by, if seems the developing cycle have 2 distinct phase between release and post story content. And EW the release was fantastic while the post story was lacking. So here hoping this will be the same pattern but in reverse.

[Voidmage]

Yess this

DT defenders always come with excuses such as 'oh its a new arc' and brush off complainers coz 'we aren't MC'

Yet Penacony is just that, and its such an amazing story filled with many likeable characters (well cos Mihoyo actually have to sell 10-20 new ones a year)

Meanwhile, SE spent two years just to make one character in Wuk Lamat that split the fanbase instead...lol

I think square should actually look into those games tbh.
As inspiration mind you just as they did with WOW years ago.

There is no shame in looking at stuff that works and learning from it.
That or actually plattest the story before they release it.

Genshin and HSR have their own problems even with the narrative but they have gotten far better and consistent especially with the character writing.
Arlechino and Furina were damn good and at least for me Belobog was one of the best finales in a game I have played with the characters.

I know they can do it if they want and have actually pressure like with the 1.0 to 2.0 thing.

[Jojoya]

Well, as little as it is 7.01 is better, A LOT better.

If past example with End Walker of anything to go by, if seems the developing cycle have 2 distinct phase between release and post story content. And EW the release was fantastic while the post story was lacking. So here hoping this will be the same pattern but in reverse.

Got to disagree there. The raid story is really bad with a couple of glaring plot holes and questionable decision making on the part of the WoL.

The 7.0 MSQ may not have been a masterpiece but I think that is once again because they're trying to push what should be 2 expansions of story into a single expansion. EW only got away with it because of 8 years of backstory for support. This one had no backstory to support it. Just to complicate things, each part of the story was clearly targeted at different audiences. You're not going to get a lot of positive feedback when players only enjoy one part and not the other.


As for why so many players dislike Wuk Lamat, it's probably because they've accurately portrayed the false bravado and overconfidence that so many young people display as they transition from teen to adult. Yes, it's annoying but it was also very realistic. The main issue I have was the recurring vomit "humor". That was totally unnecessary. If they wanted to give Wuk Lamat a flaw like motion sickness, then make relevant to something that happens in the story instead just a reason to show someone needing to vomit.

When it comes to the second half of the story, why on earth didn't we immediately get in touch with Cid and the Ironworks once we saw what was happening in HF? To me, that was by far the most glaring oversight. We're heading into the middle of what's obviously a high tech society and there's no mention of the Ironworks at all, even to say that we should find out as much as we can while waiting for a response for them.

[Raven2014]

Got to disagree there. The raid story is really bad with a couple of glaring plot holes and questionable decision making on the part of the WoL.

There is a difference between an actual "plot hole" and "in universe context". What part of the current raid story is a plot holes? At the same times, I can give you at least 5 plot hole in the MSQ from the top of my head.

The 7.0 MSQ may not have been a masterpiece but I think that is once again because they're trying to push what should be 2 expansions of story into a single expansion. EW only got away with it because of 8 years of backstory for support.

I wish people stop saying this or saying something like, because it's just an excuse.

- DT's story is bad isn't because EW or ShB were good.

- DT's story is bad because it is bad, even in a vacuum.

- Do you think if DT were released as a stand-alone tittle, most of us will magically think the story is good?

It does not matter if it's an accumulation of 10 years of story. It does not matter if it's a complete new story. They have 25h-30h to tell a story. If you can not tell a compelling story and create interesting main character after 30 hours, than your writing suck, period. I can give at least 5 recommendation of RPG on Steam that cost 20$ or less, that last 20h or less, that was written by indie developers with completely self-contained story. They won't have the pretty graphic, or the flashy animation, but their writing will be 10 years ahead of Dawn Trail.

As for the rest of your post, you're making up a lot of assumption to excuse the writing:

- I dislike both the first and second half of the story, not because who they're targeting as audiences, but because they're both bad. In fact, while the 2nd half added a bit of tension, it's where most of the inconsistency and plot hole exist.

- What you're claiming as "transition from teen to adult" is what people have been discussed a lot already, we call it the shounen theme. You know, coming of age, growing pain and all that.

Like I said before, Shounen is one of the most common trope in JRPG, and many games did it right and were universally love when they are well written. Wuk's character is so unnaturally idealistic that it is almost idiotic, especially with the constant cheering she got from NPC. There is nothing remotely realistic about her writing. She sucks wasn't because she was supposed to be a teenage. But when your main characters are so simplistic and repetitive that you can always guess what she's about to say, and even if you skip most of what she said you still won't miss anything important than it's a serious problem. I can assure you, had Emet Sech kept repeating 10 variations of the same lines back in ShB, his treatment wouldn't be different.





You can certainly make an argument about what kind of story they wanted to write, but I can tell you whatever that story is, the MSQ failed pretty badly at delivering it.

[Kaecilius]

The 7.0 MSQ may not have been a masterpiece but I think that is once again because they're trying to push what should be 2 expansions of story into a single expansion. EW only got away with it because of 8 years of backstory for support. This one had no backstory to support it. Just to complicate things, each part of the story was clearly targeted at different audiences. You're not going to get a lot of positive feedback when players only enjoy one part and not the other.

Respectfully, I think the problem is entirely the opposite. The first half of the story had too little meat to it, and stretching to more than half an expansion was pushing it. The repetition on themes and dialogue was getting really evident by around lvl 94 MSQ; There is no way it could have been expanded to an entire expansion without a fundamental rewrite of what Tural actually is. The second half of the story had potential, but no time to develop properly because we had already spent too much time basically doing Allied Society quests on main.